Chris: So welcome to this podcast with me, Chris Jones. Around Talent campus. We have our new talent campus eight about to run. And last year I ran a survey with all past talent campers about what they would like to get out of a reunion from talent campus. And then number two, things came out which were the rocket fuel to the soul that I think is the, the kind of foundation of what talent campus is really all about. But also to hear success stories from past talent campers, what they’ve achieved since they did talent campus. And I’m delighted to say that we’ve got Paniota with us, who is one of the superstars of talent campus four, but, you know, pre pandemic, of course, and she’s been on an incredible journey and she’s here to share that story with us. So welcome, Taniota. How are you doing?

Panayiota: I’m doing really well. Thank you, Chris, for inviting me on this podcast.

Chris: Fantastic. So I don’t want to get too much into talent campus now. We’ll come back to that at the end, but just give me a quick brief rundown of what your talent campus experience was like.

Panayiota: I would say it was quite inspiring and it, you know, gave me kind of, I suppose it’s words that you use rocket fuel to get things done, because I’d, I’d gone off to university many, many years before in quite a prestigious screenwriting school, but yet I hadn’t got anything written or got things done. I got things made. And I think talent campus came along at a time when it was just when my father had died, and it just made me realise, shit, you know, we haven’t got long, we need to get stuff done. And the talent campus that I went on really kind of pushed me and encouraged me to not be afraid to get things written, get things made. And the incredible amount of people that I met, especially sort of, you know, the community of writers and those that were supporting us as tutors, it kind of really made me feel. Lifted me up, made me feel like, yeah, you know what? I can go and do this. I can do this.

Chris: Amazing. And then you did. So you put on a show and tell us all about that show that you put on.

Panayiota: That was a play that I did at Thedrotechnis in Camden. I managed to swindle a two week run out of them. A lot of it was networking. I knew a few people that run the theatre, but what I did to get those two weeks, because obviously having that space for two weeks is very expensive for a theatre to hand out freely, which it did I just went and basically volunteered two days a week helping them in the back office and did loads of things that the theatre needed that they couldn’t have put before to pay for and put my marketing skills and comm skills to use and really helped the theatre. And in return, they gave me two weeks space and I wrote a play. And it was a play about social issues, about disability, and particularly a subject that was at the time in the news where if you were paralysed or you ended up in a wheelchair, you weren’t going to get care at home, you were not going to get carers. Come and support your adaptations. Actually, we’re going to stick you in a care home, no matter who you were. And it was inspired by a story that I met a lady that I met at St Mandible Hospital who was fighting to get back to her flat in south London because they wouldn’t let her return home after she was paralysed. And so the story was inspired by that. I sat down and literally, in three months wrote the screenplay. And then I thought, you know what? This would make a great play. And I asked the dry technist if they would support me to get it on. And the rest of it, to be honest, I raised funds to pay for myself, to pay for the actors, to pay for the art direction, the marketing. It was a crazy experience producing it myself, but I did it. It was a two week run. It was sell out. It got lots of positive feedback and I think it gave me that first solid credit that I needed, really, to press forward with other projects.

Chris: Right. And I love that you traded sweat equity to get the space where there isn’t a way. You’ll find a way, you’ll make a way, which is know very much what talent campus is really about. Did any of the talent campers that you did talent campus for with you come on that journey through that. That play?

Panayiota: Yes. Oh, my God. I’m going to be really embarrassed now. I’m trying to remember the name. It was an art director. Oh, my God, I forgot his name. Keith. Keith. I remember, yes. Keith was an art director on a lot of prestigious movies. We got on really well together. Really gentle guy. I’m very drawn to people that have got a gentle aura. And we got on really well. And I told him about the play and he said, did you know that I was an art director on movies? I was like, no. He said, I can come and help you. And literally, I gave him a budget of 500 quid and he turned the set into this amazing space we got a lot of amazing feedback on the way he designed it and literally me and him together over a weekend, I. He went, there’s a hammer, there’s a piece of this, stick it up on that. And literally he designed it all. But between me and him over the weekend before the opening, we put it all together. I probably killed him. I think he worked 24 hours per day. But you know what? He did it. He did it. It was brilliant. And then he went back to Temple on Sky and designing that and it was like, he just did that for me. But totally grateful because with that, I think it really added something to the play. He kind of was inspired. 1970s NHS look and we had this modern play set in this space that looked like old NHS. It was fantastic. And that came from him and I wouldn’t have never thought of that.

Chris: Right. And what were the economics of the play like, did you make money back on ticketing or was it a loss?

Panayiota: I basically 3000 pounds short myself. So I put the space was free. I think obviously money was made in the bar for the theatre and I expect a lot of money was made, which was great because they gave me that space that normally did. I think it’d be about 500 pounds a day. No, it didn’t. I didn’t make money back. The thing is, I lost 3000. But I saw it as an investment because I got a fantastic play out of it, a two week run. I got a credit. I got lots of great reviews and I got a fantastic experience of putting it all together myself and doing it myself and I don’t. Yes. To me, I saw it as an investment, to be honest, because we invest in a lot of things. All right? And I saw something tangible there and people came to see it and I got lots of feedback and I got lots of meetings. I had a used one night to invite all the invite production companies and agents and they all turned up and they ate lots of greek food and they drank all the booze and they turned out and I thought, oh, you know, come and see it and hike off. But they didn’t. I got. I got emails saying, come in and talk to us. I went to speak to kudos. I went to speak to lots of different production companies, you know, that came to see. And a lot of them were people that I’d also met at the London Screenwriters festival and stayed connected with. And at Crucible at Talent campus, I stayed connected with them and I invited them and they remembered me and they came.

Chris: Right? And crucible is that party at the very end of talent campus where we unleash the talent campers on the industry. People have agreed to come and meet everybody, which is kind of like the crazy conclusion to talent campus.

Panayiota: It’s brilliant though, Chris, it’s absolutely brilliant. Because what we mustn’t forget is when we meet these people, it’s not, we’ll send you a script next week. To them, it’s about cultivating a relationship. You’re not going to get an answer or something happen overnight. You have to act normal, not act like you’re crazy. Meet these people, engage with them, get their emails. And I did, and I got some very big emails which, you know, I agreed to touch base with them at a later date. And in terms of the play, I did that with some of them and they didn’t go, oh, it’s this crazy woman that I met, Cruiser bought. Oh, it’s actually that, that really nice, engaging lady who had some interesting things that she wants to write about. You know what? I’m going to go and see her play. I’m going to send some people to go and see her play and then I got meetings out of it. Yeah. And those relationships just keep going, cultivating year after year. You’re not going to get overnight response. You’ve got to show them what you’re doing new. Your writing’s going to get better. So that’s when you get out your trump card two or three years later with these people.

Chris: So the play is completed and, you know, it’s a week later and you’re reflecting on the whole experience. What do you think of the big takeaways? What did you learn? What did it give you?

Panayiota: It taught me that you’re not going to get anywhere without hard work. This is, listen, I’m working class. I never went to some posh school. I didn’t go to any film schools. Okay. I realised that blood, sweat and tears and a lot of networking will probably get you the same results. And the takeaways were I got to work with actors, which I’d never done before, and that was developing a skill for me as a director. The second takeaway shows that, you know, if you ask, you’re probably going to get, you know, I asked them for free space and they went, you know what? All right, we’ll give it to you. You know, and probably the third takeaway for me is, oh, my God, the feeling of watching the audience absorb and take in what you’ve done. I stood there every night facing the audience. I didn’t watch my play. I watched the audience and sometimes, as a screenwriter, you don’t get to do that because your film or your short film could be shown anywhere and you may not be there, but every night I stood and watched the audience and I watched them laugh and I watched them cry and it made me realise, oh, my God, I can write. You know, I’m writing emotionally engaging, entertaining stuff. It gave me validation that I was not a bad writer.

Chris: Right. I mean, you’ve raised two really incredible points there. One, you know, earlier on was the execution, Trump’s planning, and we can get stuck in planning all too often. And actually what we need to do is just go, I don’t care what it takes, I’m going to make this happen. And when you make that decision, it shows up in your body and your energy and people can sense it and then they get on board your train with you. It’s incredible.

Panayiota: I think I totally agree with you. And also, things are going to go wrong. Oh, my God, so many things went wrong. And some of my actors, you know, pushed. Pushed the boundaries a little bit. And these are all things that you’re going to learn. If you’re a director or a writer, you’re going to learn, people are going to push your buttons a little bit. And these are all skills that you build and you learn and you learn to sort of deal with. But, yeah, I would agree.

Chris: And the other thing that you really eloquently highlighted is the incredible value of being present when your work is performed, whether that’s being at a screening of your film or literally, as you did, standing with the audience and feeling that engagement. Because we’re kind of genetically programmed through tens of thousands of years of storytelling to be present when the story is told, when we share our story, in order to evoke a reaction or an insight for other human beings and to feel that connection is so, so powerful.

Panayiota: Absolutely. And for me, I think that’s the fun part of writing, to be honest, you know, and we don’t get enough of it. If we, as screenwriters, we probably don’t get enough of it. So I would thoroughly recommend to anybody, you want to test your workout. There’s a lot of initiatives around, you know, that you can write a ten minute playing and get it on somewhere. You know, there are a lot of initiatives. You don’t have to try and go, you know, 2 hours worth, you know, there’s other. There’s places, there’s platforms everywhere, you know, where you can try and get your work on. Or ask local theatres, you know, can I try this out? Can I do this? You know, 100%.

Chris: Was your play ever filmed at all? Did. Is there. Is there. Is there a record of it?

Panayiota: Yes, it was, but it was filmed by the theatre themselves. I don’t know if they did it very well, to be honest. But, yeah, it was. It wasn’t. I I forgot. Got to do it, you know, and all the kind of, you know, busyness of organising and the stress of it all, you know, because it was quite stressful. I. The one thing was I should have set a camera up to shoot it, you know. But, you know, you learn these things, you know, you learn.

Chris: Exactly. So let’s move on to your. Your short film loose strands. Tell us what that’s about and how it came to be.

Panayiota: Loose strands is about a young woman whose sort of broke. Her relationship is broken down with a mother. Mother’s got a lot of mental health problems and she ends up in a mental health institution and she. The daughter thinks, this is my last chance to try and get through to mum and rebuild the relationship that was broken many years ago. And she does that in a unique way, in a traditional greek way. And she goes to the hospital to try and reconnect with her mother and her mother’s still very sort of the walls up and she just finds a very unique way of trying to communicate to her mother for that one day and getting through to her, you know, to try and start to build a relationship. So that’s. That’s what it’s about.

Chris: Right. And I assume it was put together in. In your trademark, all guns blazing, you know, hear all punches being thrown. Just get it made any way you possibly can.

Panayiota: I’ll tell you what, I made it through anger, to be honest, Chris, because it originally got select. The idea got selected by the BFI short film development programme and I got to write the script for four to five months with a fantastic script editor, Jess Jones, I think her name is Jessica Jones. And we came, by the time we’d finished, it was this beautiful little film. And then I was encouraged to apply for BFI funding, which I did. I got shortlisted, interviewed, then I got rejected and they went, oh, change this and come back to us. Which I did. And then I got shortlisted, interviewed and rejected. And I just thought, you know what? I’m not doing this a third time. You know, like, I’m up against probably lots of you’re very talented people. But you know what? It took a year, that process of applying and then interviewed rejection, apply over a year, wasted time, which is what I thought it was. Wasted. I wasted a year applying. So I thought, you know what? I’ve had enough. And I went and I took advantage of some of their initiatives where you meet producers and stuff like that. And I met a few producers along the way and I found one that was interested in the stories that I wanted to tell. And I’d already raised a little bit of money for it myself. And she just came on board and between us, raised a little bit more money. Not a heck of a lot of money. And she had connections, I. Connections. And between us, we got it made within six months.

Chris: Right. And can you show what the budget, the little bit of money was? You don’t have to if you don’t want to.

Panayiota: So the film costs 17,000 pounds to make.

Chris: Right.

Panayiota: And we’re not. We’re not all there yet.

Chris: Yeah.

Panayiota: So we’re still trying to raise funds.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, if we can help you, you know, promote your crowdfund or whatever, however you choose to do it, let us know what. What was the journey like then, once you got. When you went, this is it, I’m doing it. How did that feel? What was the experience like?

Panayiota: Do you know what I felt? I like the idea of being in control of my own stuff, you know, not relying on others or waiting on others. And that experience of having to wait so long to then be told, no, you haven’t got the money. Made me realise, you know, what? I could in that year, I could have made it myself. So it was really kind of energising, I think, to think, I’m gonna get something made, you know, this. This woman’s gonna help me. Leslie Ann McFarlane, Farlane Media. She came on board and very creative producer and, you know, I think it was kind of exhilarating to think, oh, we’re moving forward. We’re moving forward, and there’s going to be an end result to this. We were crowdfunding. We didn’t get as much as we wanted, but it didn’t matter. It’s still going to get made by hook or crook. It was going to get made, you know.

Chris: Right. And again, that central tenant of talent campus, which is, don’t wait for others to build your destiny. Build destiny yourself. Like you’re in control of your own life. If you wait around for too long for other people to give you permission, you’re just with a massive crowd of other people who are also waiting for that green light from a bunch of randoms almost. I mean, I don’t want to denigrate people, but there is, you know, there’s a lot of power put in the hands of very few people, and I don’t. It’s just much better to take action yourself and move forward and live or die on your own sword.

Panayiota: Absolutely. And let’s think about it. We didn’t have all the money yet. We still got it made, it got finished, and it’s out there at the festivals, doing the festival rounds now, trying to get into festivals. Yet we didn’t raise all the money. So work that out. How does that work? You don’t think if you don’t have the money, you’re not going to get it done out there? Because that’s not true at all. Because I thought that at first, and then I realised, actually, that’s a lie I’ve been telling myself because in actual fact, I got it made and it’s out to festivals right now. And we still didn’t raise all the funds.

Chris: Right. The perfect budget is, in fact, exactly equal to the amount of money that you can raise by hook or by crook and ever it will be so. And the other weird thing, I’m sure you had this experience is that moment you’ve made that decision. We spoke about this earlier that you say, I’m doing this thing and people can sense it in you. They get on board, money starts to appear, resources start to appear, people start to help. They connect you with other people.

Panayiota: I mean, absolutely. I tell you what, I’ve been following this cinematographer for a very long time. When I first went to LCC to do my screenwriting degree, I remember watching one of his short films that he did that won a palme door. And I thought, oh, my God, this guy’s so talented. You know, like. And I basically a friend of my tutors, and that’s why she showed it. And it was like, okay, like, you know, and I’ve always followed his work and, you know, I didn’t know him, didn’t connect with him. And then when I decided to do loose strands, I thought, you know what? You know, I’m gonna ask him. So I contacted my tutor who said, right, all right, I’ll see if he wants to speak to you. And she connect. He said, yeah, yeah, I don’t mind. Based in Ireland. And we got on the phone, lovely guy. Lovely, lovely, lovely mandev. And, you know, been there, done lots of big music videos, had gone on to film. And he recently, well, it was kind of like maybe a year or so ago, did notes on blindness, which is amazing, award winning documentary. And they won lots of awards across the world. He’s the first british guy to win the Golden Frog at camera image. And it was like, and I’m talking to him and I mentioned Lou Strands and I explained it to him and he went, yeah, it sounded like the sound of that. I think I’ll. Yeah, I’ll come over to England to shoot that for you. And it was like, what? And he just. And he was so generous because not only did he come over and he shot the film and we had a brilliant time with him and he added so much value to the film. But, you know, when we couldn’t afford to bring him back for the colouring, he came on his own accord, paid his own ticket, you know, like really, really generous guy. Now, I’d never imagined somebody works in the business to be so generous. And he was, and I think it’s because he believed in the project and he liked the people that he worked with, the crew that we had. You know, we treated him really well, you know, like, everybody got treated the same, you know, and, you know, he was just so generous. And then he said to me, whatever else have you got? What else have you written? Come on. Come on, Bunny, you’re the. Let’s shoot another film. So he’s now badgering me to get my next short in to so he can come over and shoot the next one. And to me, that’s validation for me. For me, someone like him telling me, write your next one. I want to come over and shoot, it speaks volumes to me and it’s just. It lifts me up. It makes me feel, wow, you know, that’s great. You know, I’m building my team as well because that’s another important thing. I’m starting to build a team that want to work with me and I want to work with them and I want to take them on the journey with me.

Chris: Amazing. Okay, so. And when. When do you think people will be able to see the movie if they can’t get to a festival? What’s, what’s the plan?

Panayiota: Well, at the moment, it is doing the festival. We’re trying to get out festivals. We are doing private screenings, but the film sort of talks about mental health stigma in marginalised communities. So we’re doing a lot of screenings within the community to try and raise awareness and educate ethnic communities about mental health stigma. So there’s opportunities there, but currently it’s been selected for aesthetica. So in November, if you’re in York and you want to go and see it, it’s on three times in York, you know, and that’s the other thing, because the first film festival got selected from. There’s me thinking, okay, do this film. See what it does, how it gets on, you know? You know, we should get into some film festivals, maybe little ones. BAFTA qualifying, aesthetica was my first film selection. So, you know, for me, that first film festival was aesthetica. And it’s like, aesthetica, BAFTA qualifying. Amazing. So, you know, you don’t know where things are going to lead to. You don’t. You really don’t. You’ve got expectations, and then something else happens.

Chris: Right. Amazing. So let’s just flashback in time to talent campus. Now, what do you think you took from talent campus when you did it that’s helped you on this amazing journey?

Panayiota: Okay. I think it might have been about. There’s several things, but I think one of the things that kept me when I was listening to you and to listening to other people speak, but particularly, like, the way we were being taught was, I just felt like messages going out to me saying, don’t follow what everyone else is doing. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t follow the herd, basically. And I think if you. There’s a lot of people applying for things like, say, BFI funding, there’s a lot of people. You know, one thing that came across to me is that be different. If you’re different and you step outside of the box and you try a different avenue, you’re likely to succeed, you know? And I kind of took that away with me, that I need to not follow what everyone else is doing because there’s thousands of people doing that. Could I be the couple, one of the couple of hundred doing this, you know, and I’m likely to be, you know, might get a break or a chance. And I think that was. So while everybody else is, say, maybe wants to get a play on, and they apply to competitions to get those, try and win a competition to get a play on, I thought, you know what? I’m going to dodge around that. I’m going to go and speak to a theatre and say, can I volunteer? In response to volunteering, would you give me free space? So that was an example of don’t follow what everyone else is doing. Be different. So I got that out of Tallinn campus also to be ready. Don’t be reactive. I mean, there’s a lot of people that I know, they hear a competition out there or something’s happening and they react to it. They haven’t got the materials ready, they haven’t got their pitch deck ready, they haven’t got their script ready. People who know me will always say, bunny, you’re just somebody who hardly ever enters competitions, because at the end of the day, I want to be ready. I want to have the right pitch deck ready, I want the right script ready. And I think it’s really important to be writing, to be squirrelling away and be ready for the right opportunity because those opportunities can come along and you can miss them. And that was one of the other things that I got out of talent campus, you know.

Chris: Okay, and what about the. I mean, we talk a lot about community and the actual group, the cohort?

Panayiota: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. I don’t know. Everyone kept saying that our talent campus group was amazing group of people. I don’t know if it was the aura, the vibe that you guys were getting, but they were an incredible bunch of people. I. I’m still in touch with most of them, you know, and the support and they made. They made me feel like I could. I could do anything, you know, having people in the room that have got the same vested interest or the same experiences have got the same interest in getting, you know, writing a screenplay or making things, you know, and that community, having a communal support like that was incredible. In actual fact, now sad Keefe was involved in my play, but Mona was also the production manager on my film, you know, and Leah, who was a coach, was the spark on the film. You know, there’s a lot of people that I still keep in touch with. Some of those people also supported the film, but during the talent campus, I was at a period where I was really low because I lost my father and, like, yet those group of people came around and I felt I was being hurt, hugged and supported, and I felt like they made me feel like I could do anything, you know, and to be, I think it was a week long, and to be in that sort of atmosphere and to absorb all of that, it really, really invigorates you and motivates you and realises it makes you realise what you really want to do with your life and you need to get on with it, you know? And there are people, there’s a network of people who are willing to support you and they’re not kind of envious of what you’re trying to do. They actually just want to help and be supportive and be a part of that journey with you. And so I got a lot of that, you know, and my talent campus people, I’m pretty much in touch with 80% of them still. You know, we’re still talking, we’re doing stuff together. We’re helping each other.

Chris: Amazing. Well, I think that’s pretty much it. Paneer. What an amazing journey. And, you know, from that account of talent campus, I actually want to sign up and do it. It sounds amazing. So, final question. Ask everybody. If you could offer a piece of advice to a creative, whether it’s a screenwriter, filmmaker, or any. Anybody in that massive spectrum of opportunities that creativity offers, what advice would you offer them? It can be anything. Eat green food, or, you know, whatever you want.

Panayiota: Write a page a day. Write a page of script a day. Think about it. If you write a page of script a day, no matter how good or bad it is, think of how many scripts you have written in one year. Okay. All right. You can have Christmas off, but a page a day. And that’s what I try to do amongst all the other things, I think I’m going to try and write a page a day, and I just stack them up, you know, write stuff, because if you don’t write anything, nothing’s gonna happen. So page a day is my philosophy that I try to stick to, and that is the best advice I can give to any writer.

Chris: Amazing. Well, write a page a day. Excellent advice. All about building that repetitive muscle of being creative, even when you don’t want to be creative. Amazing. Thank you, Paniota. It’s been an amazing conversation, and I’m gonna have a chat with you at some point about talent campus eight. We’d love to have you come and talk to the people doing talent campus eight. Share your journey, and in the meantime, I look forward to seeing your movie, and I guess I’ll see you at the Oscars if I don’t see you before.

Panayiota: Thanks, Chris. Thank you.

Chris: Bye.